G. P. Marsh - S. F. Baird Correspondence

A leading 19th century authority on North American wildlife,
Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1887) is now remembered as a science
administrator. He was the first director of the United States National
Museum, second secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and founder of the
U.S. Fish Commission, the forerunner of the Oceanographic Institute at Woods
Hole, Massachusetts. He placed naturalists on all major government-sponsored
expeditions, and created an international network of scientific exchange for
the United States.

Baird met Marsh through his wife, Mary Churchill Baird, who had
known the Marshes when she was a schoolgirl in Burlington. Baird and Marsh
shared many professional interests, worked hard to further each other's
careers, and corresponded regularly from 1847 until Marsh's death 35 years
later. As a member of the governing Board of Regents, Marsh recommended
Baird for the position of assistant secretary at the Smithsonian, collected
specimens for him during his term as U.S. Minister to Turkey, and furthered
connections between the Smithsonian and learned societies in Italy and
elsewhere.

Most of Marsh's letters are housed at the Archives of the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC while Baird's letters are part of
the Marsh Collection in the Special Collections Department, at the
University of Vermont. Biographical information can be found in William H.
Dall, Spencer Fullerton Baird. A Biography. (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott, 1915) and E. F. Rivinus and E. M. Youssef, Spencer Baird of
the Smithsonian. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992).